Daniel Mason (1) (1976–)

I read widely enough to appreciate the fact that truly original, gifted storytelling is a rare and precious thing. Daniel Mason’s North Woods is the first book in a while to join the rarified pantheon of books that surprised and delighted me.

The novelty of the storytelling makes it hard to communicate the magic of the novel in the form of a summary or book review. At the most basic level, I suppose you’d characterize this the chronological tale of a single plot of land in the remote show more north woods of New England, a place that alternatively serves as a refuge, home, and/or prison to a succession of organisms - human, animal, vegetable – that occupy the land over the course of generations. Mason doesn’t confine himself to narration but expands his storytelling toolkit to include everything from photographs to sonnets, vintage almanac pages to snippets of birdsong, letters, botanical drawings, journals, topographical maps - even excerpts from a tantalizingly trashy tabloid.

But in Mason’s world, time isn’t a river that travels in one direction; rather, it’s a geologic accretion, events piling up one atop the other, each stratigraphic layer impacting the shape of the layer above, with tectonic events occasionally collapsing the layers into each other. Relics abandoned by previous owners resurface, altering the paths of the lives of those who come after. Lives, loves, and secrets carve metaphorical initials in the walls of the house that appears, expands, transforms, and decays as the generations pass. Ghosts of the past – some figurative, others literal – linger and interact with the present.

Each stratigraphic layer/mini-narrative possesses its own unique protagonist, plot, and sense of period. Some of the narratives are hopeful, some comic, some tragic, some poignant. What they share in common are depths of imagination, precision, and compassion, all couched in prose that is vivid and lyrical. The members of my book club each took a stab at identifying their favorite “geological layer” – what does it say that no two of us agreed on the same one?

Mason's use of nature as a metaphor for a multitude of human experiences (hope, beauty, loneliness, exile, inspiration, refuge, madness …) is artful without feeling contrived, and sets the stage for the novel’s overarching theme, which seems to be “The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.” A fitting motif for this tale that explores the fragility of human aspiration and the unfathomable mysteries of the universe, but also celebrates the ultimate transcendency of life. show less

The Winter Soldier - Mason
4 stars

I began this book in December. I found Mason’s clear descriptions of WWI’s eastern front too gruesome for the holiday season. I had no doubt that I would return to the book. The characters and their story were too alive in my head for me to simply leave them.

This is a war story and a coming of age story for 22 year old Lucius Krzelewskis, sixth child of a Polish/Austrian aristocrat. Lucius is a medical student when war is declared. He enlists, against show more the wishes of his family, in the medical services. He enlists hoping to gain practical medical experience since his training has yet to advance beyond textbooks and lectures. He finds himself assigned as the only doctor in a primitive hospital in a remote outpost of the Carpathian Mountains. He learns surgical skills from an unusual nursing sister, Sister Maragarete. The descriptions of the medical procedures and the conditions of the hospital are not for anyone with a weak stomach.

Lucius becomes particularly interested in the treatment of ‘nervous’ disorders (what we would call PTSD). Very little is known about such disorders which are often dismissed as cowardice. Lucius is aware that some current treatments are no less than physical torture. His compassionate efforts for a particularly challenging patient leads to an act of German discipline that rivals any Nazi torture in recorded in the history of the next war. It was difficult to read. Lucius carries a sense of failure and profound guilt over the military abuse of this patient. It contributes to his own nervous disorder as the war continues and after it ends.

Seasons come and go as the war continues and Lucius gains surgical knowledge under the most horrific conditions. Somewhere in the midst of the mutilations, disease, and death there is also time for forbidden love. One thing I’ve learned with this book and two others that I’ve read, is that Daniel Mason has a finely tuned sense of irony. It elevates the global disaster of the war into something bizarre and occasionally comedic. Luicius’ stumbling readjustment to civilian life somehow captures all of the fragmented lives in a shattered Europe. It’s so sadly human. show less

A young Puritan couple flees to the wilderness, where they build a little cabin in which they can live and love in peace. Thus begins the long history of a tract of land in rural Massachusetts which will see love and hate, murder and betrayal, prosperity and ruin over the course of the next three centuries.

The writing style is fascinating, since Mason takes up the different voice of each character and era. There's also a thread of the supernatural running through, as ghosts and other uncanny show more occurrences pop up in many of the tales. A recurring theme is the interaction between nature and humans, and the way the land is shaped by the people who live on it and vice versa. Most of the stories end on a sad note, though there are happy moments, of course. An enjoyable read, well-written, but not one that I think I would ever revisit. show less

Long ago, a pair of lovers escape their oppressive community to live together in a remote forest cabin in northwestern Massachusetts. Many years later, a woman held captive by Native Americans is sent to the cabin, now occupied by an old woman, to live in peace away from both the Natives and the colonists. Many years later, a soldier moves in with his two daughters to start an orchard and a life. And so on and so on, for centuries the land and the forest and the house and the animals and the show more people are a haven, welcoming new people and seeing them leave, but holding their history close.

What a fascinating read. There's a slightly mixed media feel to it, with a few illustrations, a few poems/songs, and a very graphic chapter from the perspective of an insect. It also feels mixed-genre, containing history and mystery and science and ghosts and magical realism, and spanning centuries from the 1600s(??) to the present day.
Is this a perfect book? It might be. It doesn’t feel like it was written specifically for me, the way some books do, just that it sprang fully formed into ideal existence. It’s a bit like a better version of The Overstory or Cloud Atlas, intertwining a diversity of stories, but without getting bogged down in any one for too long. The discovery of the stories of the past by the people of the future feels very natural - sometimes they find a hidden letter, or a literal skeleton, or have a mental break, or meet a ghost. I really enjoyed the slightly supernatural or magical realism aspects. My only small quibble is that we are never told exactly what year it is, which meant I was always distracting myself by trying to figure out the years from context clues instead of immersing myself in the reading. But that's just the kind of reader I am. show less